Gregory Koberger :: the blog

When asking for advice, implement a 5 minute rule.  Don’t let anyone advise you until they’ve thought about it for at least five minutes.

It’s amazing that people take five minutes to decide what they want from the McDonalds Dollar Menu, yet they’re ready to jump in with their take on life or business decisions before you’re even done talking.

It doesn’t have to be five minutes- thirty seconds, an hour, or a day all work.  The important part is that you’re asking the person to think first.

Remember this rule when you’re giving advice, too, and you’ll instantly become much more thoughtful and helpful.

Recently, there has been an ongoing debate on which is better- the lean or fat startup.  A lot has been said for both sides- and honestly, it comes down to what’s best for the given situation.

One thing we have to look out for that hasn’t yet been mentioned: massive offline companies.  They have a ton of money.  To put the $100k or $1 million investments we see announced on TechCrunch all the time into perspective: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein got a $53.4 million bonus in 2006.  Imagine what a tech start-up could do with $53.4 million- and that was just one guys bonus.  Once these big companies- especially the old media companies- figure this internet thing out, lean start-ups are out of luck.

Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the story behind Hulu.  Imagine a lean start-up doing what Hulu managed to do.  You’d end up with, well, Joost or Yidio.  Pretty soon, every company will realize they need their own Jason Kilar.  Imagine if some brilliant, budding entrepreneur had the half a billion dollars News Corp spent on mySpace to create their own social network.  Had Rupert Murdoch found a man with a vision to fund, rather than pouring all that cash into the massive dying social network?  Facebook would have some serious competition.

Quite frankly, the problem with lean start-ups comes down to quality.  Can it be done?  Yes, it can.  But imagine how much faster and better a start-up could be created if they had a few bucks in their bank account.

Have an idea for a start-up?  No need to be a starving entrepreneur anymore.  Now might be a good time to skip the VC route and head straight to the old media offices.  They certainly have the money, and they’re starting to believe this Internet thing just might take off.

I’m bad at answering emails.  After all, it’s so easy to procrastinate.  “I’ll get to it tonight,” or “what difference is a few hours going to make?” are just some of the convincing arguments I regularly make to myself.

I really liked this line on developer Kenny Meyers‘ contact form:

I’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

That simple sentence guarantees two things:

1. Kenny won’t procrastinate when answering emails, since a few hours will make a difference.
2. People are more comfortable emailing him, since he’s made email slightly less asynchronous.

By making a public promise with absolute numbers, you’re forcing yourself to adhere to it.  Using a relative time frame such as “as soon as possible” affords endless procrastination- “24 hours” does not.  This technique isn’t limited to just email, either.  You can use it for workouts (“3 miles a day” rather than “exercising daily”), blog posts (“new blog post every day” rather than “regular posts”), or making plans (“by the end of the week” rather than “soon”)- basically, anything that involves some sort of self control.

Does it work?  I’m not sure, I’d have to ask him.  I’ll know by this time tomorrow.

Job descriptions tell employees what they can’t do.  Take the average job description for a programmer: it relegates them to their IDE, saying they can’t do marketing, biz dev, sales, writing or project management.

What this does is put employees in silos- just like a programmer wouldn’t take coding advice from a sales guy, marketers won’t listen to a techie.

So, how about using this as a job description?

Wanted: People who can help us create a kick ass startup.

Yes, you need people who can program.  And you need people who can balance the books.  So, throw in something like “* programming experience encouraged” at the end.

It reminds me of how they cast the show Lost:

A lot of the casting came out of, like, finding actions they wanted to work with, rather than necessarily fill in a roll.

-Jorge Garcia, Hurley, Lost

The producers didn’t have jobs for much of the cast- many of the characters were created simply because they liked the actors.

What’s my point?  When starting a company, don’t tie people down to certain tasks.  Ideas and talent will be wasted, and they’ll eventually get bored.  Let people decide for themselves how they can best use their talents to help the company.  Sure, some things have to be done to keep the lights on.  However, if you give people the freedom to manage themselves and decide what needs to be done, you might be surprised.  A good enough team will rise to the occasion, and do more than just keep the lights on.